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Krista Van Laan. User Experience. Agenda. What is User Experience? How does a User Experience team support the rest of the organization? What processes are followed to ensure the best user experience? How does UXD fit into the Agile environment? Case studies. What is User Experience?.
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Krista Van Laan User Experience
Agenda • What is User Experience? • How does a User Experience team support the rest of the organization? • What processes are followed to ensure the best user experience? • How does UXD fit into the Agile environment? • Case studies
What is User Experience? • “User experience” simply refers to the way a product behaves and is used in the real world. A positive user experience is one in which the goals of both the user and the organization that created the product are met. Usability is one attribute of a successful user experience, but usability alone does not make an experience positive for the user. Jesse James Garrett (Author of The Elements of User Experience)
What can User Experience do for me? • A strong User Experience team can: • Improve the product in measurable ways • Lighten the load for product development • Save time for development by providing clear guidelines, flows, and designs • Create prototypes and mockups • Reduce support calls
What can User Experience do for me? • The UX team should liaison between product management and development, but also support and get input from all cross-functional teams: • Product management • Development • Sales • Marketing • Branding • Support
Mission Statement • Understand the users’ needs and evaluate our designs and products against the users’ goal and expectations. • Ensure that the products we design meet or exceed our user’s expectations in order to increase product adoption and reduce support intervention. • Create high quality products that are implemented per the design specifications using best practices.
Dream UX Team • Interaction designers • Visual designers • User researchers/user testing moderators • Prototypers • Front-end Web developers • Writers …all working together, with the opportunity for extensive brainstorming and problem-solving and the willingness to stick to product schedules
UX Deliverables • Analysis and Research: • Personas • Qualitative user research and reports • User stories • Competitive analysis • Scorecards • Design: • Functional specs • Flow diagrams • UI specs and guidelines
UX Deliverables (continued) • Prototypes: • Clickable prototypes • Mockups • Visual Design: • Polished visual design and layout • Icons & Graphic components • Technical Communications • Web content • Help • User guides & reference manuals • Videos, Flash demos, training material • Localization
UXD Process • Analyze • Design • Implement • Verify
UXD Process • Work with product management at the beginning. Understand business objectives, the behavior and thinking of the users, and the competition. • Produce architecture, wireframes, design treatments until the product takes form. • Rapid iteration: constantly refine the prototype in response to targeted inquiry into what aspects of the experience need work. (through analysis and user testing.)
User Testing • Informal • Contextual inquiry • Scorecards • Usability lab • Video recording • Eye tracking
Working in an Agile Environment • User research and testing can be utilized to prioritize features in the product backlog and to iteratively refine designs to achieve better usability. • Integrating UXD and Agile processes can be accomplished with little or no impact on release schedules.
Working in an Agile Environment 1. Early stage UX planning • High-level design • UX requirements • Detailed design and spec 2. Embed a designer and a writer on the team • No surprises • Writer produces chunks of content that keep up with development, takes some time at end to pull it all together
Working in an Agile Environment 3. UX designers and writers follow same development schedule: • Designers are one iteration ahead of the SW developers • Hand off detailed designs for developers to follow • Ideally, interface developers are on the UX team • Writers often document features one iteration after SW developers 4. Backlog contains UX design features
Designing VIP (VeriSign Identity Protection) • User-centered design methodology in an Agile environment, producing designs for Web, mobile devices • Early research phase with the cooperation of product management • User scenarios • Visio flow diagrams to document different tasks.
User Testing • Early usability tests are done with very simple materials, often just pencil drawings that help to determine whether a user understands what an application is supposed to do.
User Scenario Examples • VIP User Scenario #1a – New User: Learning through Relying site, Acquiring, Activating, Registering • VIP User Scenario #1b – New User: Learning offline, Acquiring, Activating, Registering • VIP User Scenario #1c – New User: Learning, Acquiring, Activating, and assumes account is protected without registering • VIP User Scenario #2a – Existing User: Lost/Damaged Token • VIP User Scenario #2b – Existing User: Forgot Token • VIP User Scenario #2c – Existing User: Lost/Stolen Token doesn’t find link on site • VIP User Scenario #3a – Existing User: Registering an Active Token on Additional Relying Sites • VIP User Scenario #3b – Existing User: Registering an Active Token on Additional Relying Sites but Token ID is worn • VIP User Scenario #3c – Existing User: Does not remember they have token, buys now token, later finds token and wants to return
User Testing • Target users defined • Prototype created Early users had a difficult time understanding what the passcode was and how to generate it. Adding this illustration helped a lot. At first it was at the bottom of the screen where users did not see it. • Iterative redesign • VIP consumer site
VeriSign Certificate Center • VCC came about as a result of user testing • The User Experience team created a prototype of what VCC might look like and presented it to product management. • UXD team brainstormed to figure out the every possible path for all use cases. • Three rounds of usability testing helped the team develop the product. Each night the team modified and improved the prototype in response to what was discovered during testing.
VeriSign Certificate Center • Working prototype validated by the users became basis of UI spec that describes the look and behavior of the UI. • Worked with development to oversee implementation • Made substantial and surprising improvements to the status page
VCC Deliverables • User stories • Flow diagrams • Functional spec • UI spec • Prototypes • User research